In this book, Joan Chittister and Rowan Williams, Archbishop of Canterbury, offer a sweeping set of things and circumstances to be grateful for—things for which we can sing “alleluia,” “praise and thanks be to God.”

Some are things we naturally feel grateful for: God, peace, wealth, life, faith, and unity. But when these are set alongside other things we would never think to sing “alleluia” about—death, divisions, sufferings, and even sinners—we begin to see, as Joan Chittister says in her introduction, that “Life itself is an exercise in learning to sing ‘alleluia’ here in order to recognize the face of God hidden in the recesses of time. To deal with the meaning of ‘alleluia’ in life means to deal with moments that do not feel like ‘alleluia moments’ at all.”